The full treatment

The full treatment

Friday 16 December 2005 19.04 EST
First published on Friday 16 December 2005 19.04 EST

I was doing an interview the other day, with a famous person whose name is irrelevant, for our purposes, and she did me the massive favour of bringing up her IVF treatment of her own accord. I could have punched the air; if she hadn't brought it up, you see, I would have had to bring it up. Failing that (and I would have failed), I'd have exercised my standard lie (honed by previous failures), which is, "Well, I tried to ask, but she went into complete lockdown and threatened to throw me out" - a lie that no editor ever believes.

Here are the rules where the paths of media and in vitro fertilisation cross - if your female subject is on public record as already having spoken on the matter, then you have to ask, even though the fact that she's already spoken ought to, you'd think, be enough; if someone is reaching the end of their fertility bracket - that is, 10 years off or thereabouts - you have to ask; if someone has ever adopted a child, or ever been photographed playing with some other adopted children, or giving them a toy, you have to ask. The only people you don't have to ask, in other words, are men, anyone with a whole heap of existing children, and women under 29 - those count for a fair few of the famous, but not, unfortunately, all of them.

The thing is, you see, whatever its advances and wonderful results and such, whatever fairy sprite of creativity was smiling upon its invention, IVF is still a medical procedure and anyone with any sense would no more want to pry than they would want to know about the time you got piles and had to move a vein from a seldom-accessed part of your leg in order to rectify, well, whatever. Sensible people don't want to ask; other sensible people don't want to tell. So why the fertility fixation? I thought, in kinder humour, it was just because it was new(ish), and everyone likes a public celebration of a new thing. That can't be true, otherwise it would also be a job requirement to ask these celebrities what use they make of the internet (And do you use Google, Mrs Famous-star? What does your husband think of Google? Has Google ever been a great disappointment to you?). I toyed with the idea that it might just be to introduce some drama, some heartache, into an otherwise emotionally neutral, possibly slightly bland, chat -but then, why IVF? Why not, "Any dead parents? Family riddled with cancer, at all?"

I'll tell you what it is - and I know I can't throw a stick at the moment without finding some hideous seam of misogyny - but I think we're all trying to recreate old-fashioned Enid Blyton morality - Big Patchy Doll (or whatever her name is; I wasn't allowed to read these as a kid, on account of their sexist subtext) Showed Off (read, "earned"/"achieved") Too Much, And Now Isn't Allowed Any Cake (read "family"/ "happiness"). I guess it's a reaction against 1960s laxity, like the one Blair had last summer that everybody laughed at. Why now? Why at all? Not sure. Maybe baby-boomers know.